Soup opera: Australian TV cooks steam up the screen

Jul 1, 2010, 12:43 GMT

Sydney - Everyday folk engaged in competitive cooking is proving a television ratings bonanza in Australia.

MasterChef is on six nights a week, pulls an audience of over 2 million and is building to a finale that broadcasters expect will be watched by a quarter of the nation.

Recipe books are selling like hot cakes, as are the ingredients for the dishes prepared by the aspiring cooks.

When beef stroganoff was on the menu, the requisite cut of meat flew off the shelves at butchers' shops. Kitchenware suppliers say demand for a certain brand of mixer rocketed when it made an appearance on the show. Those silvery German kitchen appliances that grace the homes of the upwardly mobile are finally getting a work out.

More than that, said Rebecca Huntley of market research firm Ipsos Mackay, the cooking shows are doing for food what the Harry Potter children's books did for reading.

'MasterChef could transform family relations and have some significant benefits for a whole generation,' she claimed. 'If we see men continue to engage with food ... it could bring about a more equitable distribution of unpaid work in the home.'

What is so startling about the soup opera genre is its appeal across the spectrum. Girls and boys as well as men and women are fans. Who would have thought that a series that features pots and pans rather than sex and violence could be a hit?

Perhaps the ultimate accolade is the scorn MasterChef has received from highbrow cultural commentators. Award-winning author Peter Carey deplored the fact that cookery books were now selling better than his novels.

'We're getting dumber every day,' the New York-based Australian said. 'We're really, literally, forgetting how to read. We've yet to grasp the fact that consuming cultural junk is completely destructive of democracy.'